32-track digital audio workstations became widely available in 1996, paving the way for all-digital audio recording, editing and mastering in more settings than ever before. Supposedly, 1999 saw the first No. 1 hit produced entirely in the digital domain. Almost anything released before that timespan would have been subject to information loss either at recording, or later during post-production.
So I’d say, “before 1996” counts as “oldies” since all we have left from that time is low quality analog material anyway.
To the same effect, any video game console without a digital video/audio output could be considered “retro”. By that definition, a PlayStation 2 would be retro, but an original Game Boy wouldn’t, because its display is driven digitally…
That is probably the most technically incorrect description of the quality difference between digital and analog audio recordings. The analog audio recordings are the actual high quality recordings, especially in the beginnings of the digital recording area. Digital audio in the 90s still had a lot of flaws that analog audio didn’t.
And analog recordings were at that time also already produced in multitask recordings in the likes of 32 tracks and above, so that’s no point for it as well.
Sorry just had to point out that quality thing, and that it can’t be used as a breaking point in time where suddenly all audio productions were high quality because they were digital.
32-track digital audio workstations became widely available in 1996, paving the way for all-digital audio recording, editing and mastering in more settings than ever before. Supposedly, 1999 saw the first No. 1 hit produced entirely in the digital domain. Almost anything released before that timespan would have been subject to information loss either at recording, or later during post-production.
So I’d say, “before 1996” counts as “oldies” since all we have left from that time is low quality analog material anyway.
To the same effect, any video game console without a digital video/audio output could be considered “retro”. By that definition, a PlayStation 2 would be retro, but an original Game Boy wouldn’t, because its display is driven digitally…
That is probably the most technically incorrect description of the quality difference between digital and analog audio recordings. The analog audio recordings are the actual high quality recordings, especially in the beginnings of the digital recording area. Digital audio in the 90s still had a lot of flaws that analog audio didn’t.
And analog recordings were at that time also already produced in multitask recordings in the likes of 32 tracks and above, so that’s no point for it as well.
Sorry just had to point out that quality thing, and that it can’t be used as a breaking point in time where suddenly all audio productions were high quality because they were digital.